Environmentalists can be quite candid when they think they are amongst the like minded. The left wing environmentalist magazine Grist recently featured an interview with Al (“don’t look at my carbon footprint”) Gore. This is one of the questions and Big Al’s response.
“Q. There’s a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What’s the right mix?
A. I think the answer to that depends on where your audience’s head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
And they wonder why we call them “alarmists.”
